This Side of Brightness (25 page)

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In Saint Nicholas Park on a mucky day, he shows Dancesca the trick of making a symbol from the foot of a bird. “See,” he says. “See. Draw a circle here. Just like this.”

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Treefrog wakes in the rear cave when a rat scuttles across his ankles. He draws his knees to his chest and whistles for Castor, but she is not around. He wonders if it is night or day, if he has been dead or if he has just been asleep, or if he has been both, and if he may be both forever, dead and sleeping.

He lights another candle and tucks his maps back into their plastic bags. Rocking back and forth in the dark dampness, he waits for the sound of a train to tell him whether it's morning or night. No trains between midnight and seven; after that, the Amtraks come every forty minutes. He singes the bottom of his beard with the lit candle, feels the heat at his chin, and waits almost an hour, curled into himself, his stomach rumbling. Nothing, so it must be night. He drops hot wax on the back of each thumb, where it hardens quickly. Then he presses his fingers into his left side to balance the pain in his liver. He still has some money left from Faraday's funeral and he wonders, perhaps, if he should go and buy gin.

He moves out of the cave into his front room and feels drawn by the tunnel, swings down.

No light whatsoever. The purest and pitchest of black. Treefrog passes by Dean's pile of trash and smells the human filth, steps away so he doesn't get shit on his shoes.

Treefrog knocks against the baby stroller, full now with garbage. He stops and stares into the carriage, reaches out, and rocks it a little from side to side: it was the summer of 1976. Lenora was just born. She was so small. Her hair was fine and thin and dark. Her skin was smooth and mahogany. Clarence Nathan felt like his world had shifted equators, given him meaning, history. He spent hours just holding her. She would lie across his stomach and kick her tiny feet in the blankets. Dancesca lay with them. There was a new quality given to time—sometimes hours would slip away in simple staring at the child. They felt whole, full, brave, assured. Lenora's helplessness was their depth. They moved together in a trinity, he, Dancesca, Lenora. Every Sunday he paid for a taxicab so that Walker could come and visit. They sat and watched baseball games together. The child slept on a cot close by. It was a time of sweet slowness, even when Lenora fussed and cried. One Sunday, Walker lifted Lenora out of her cot. He kissed the child's forehead. He took her into the bathroom, where he had already filled the sink with warm water. Clarence Nathan watched. The old man was going to baptize the child—a mixture of his own religion and the history of Eleanor's. Just before he lowered the child gently down into the sink, Walker whispered something in her ear. For a moment all was silent, and he dipped the baby in the water. The child cried a little, then stopped. Walker came out from the bathroom with a warm blanket wrapped around her. Later, he said, “I'm gonna bring Lenora for a walk.” Dancesca and Clarence Nathan watched from the window as the old man stepped into the street, pushing the baby carriage. By the side of a fire hydrant, Lenora's pacifier dropped out. Walker bent down and, with difficulty, picked it up off the ground. The rubber end was dirty. He looked around for a moment, seemed confused. Then he stuck the pacifier in his own mouth to clean it. He bent over, gently inserting the nipple in the child's mouth, and whispered something into Lenora's ear. From his distance, Clarence Nathan knew exactly what his grandfather was saying to the child.

Treefrog spins away from the baby carriage, moves on, balancing on a rail, left foot right foot left foot right foot. A tremendous urge within him now to speak to someone, anyone, to say anything, to simply let words come from his throat, long and slow and honest. He pauses for a moment by Papa Love's door and then decides against waking the old artist; he wouldn't answer the door anyway.

A mumble sounds from Elijah's cubicle and a small spill of light comes from under the door. Elijah must have reconnected the juice. Treefrog puts his ear to the cubicle and hears Angela crying. There is a sharp thud. The sound strikes Treefrog low in the stomach and rests there, gnawing at him. He takes the spud wrench out from his pocket. His throat is dry, his feet unsteady. He wants to open the door and burst in, but he holds himself back, paralyzed by inaction. The thumping and crying continue, and he hears Angela saying, in long high pathetic gulps, “Why you hurt the ones ya love, why you hurt the ones ya love?”

Treefrog remains at the door and knocks the spud wrench rhythmically into each palm. Then he hears Elijah move.

Slithering away from the cubicle, Treefrog stands beneath the grate at the opposite side of the tunnel. He waits for Elijah to emerge, but nothing happens. And he hears the thuds again, the whimper, the intake of Angela's breath. Treefrog lets himself slide down along the wall until he is sitting on the tunnel gravel. Slowly, he removes his gloves and takes out his penknife. He presses the blade down against the palm of his hand. All this nothingness, he thinks. This cowardice. This solitary life as an ear—listening, always listening, only listening.

With the knife, he makes a nick in his right palm, then his left, is amazed to flick his lighter and see two thin streams of blood running parallel down his raised wrists. He shoves his overcoat sleeves high on his arms, and a small globule of red collects in the crook of each elbow.

Under the grate, looking upward, watching the irrelevant stars, Treefrog knows that the light hitting his eyes left years ago; there is nothing up there but the movement of the past, things long imploded and forever gone: it was years later, a Friday, and he finished his shift at the skyscraper, descended in the elevator, showered and tucked his hair into a short ponytail, and they were waiting outside in a brand-new rental car, a Ford. Walker had insisted on an American-made car. Dancesca got in the backseat with five-year-old Lenora. Clarence Nathan drove. It took them four days to reach South Dakota. Clarence Nathan had sent on hundreds of dollars for a gravestone, a twenty-dollar bill each week, but there was nothing in the graveyard except a plain wooden cross marked
TURIVER
. Louisa's family had moved. Weeds were in bloom in the old shack where she had once lived. They went down to the lakeside together, all four of them. The lake was immense, the only movement that of a speedboat out in the middle of the water. They had brought food for a picnic, and they sat in silence over soggy cucumber sandwiches. The boat threw waves and a skier tumbled. For the first time all day they laughed, watching the skier vaulting through the air. Walker's body was just about crippled with rheumatism by then, but he took young Lenora down by the lakeside and stretched one arm out and bent a knee and toed his foot out in the air and every movement was imitated by the child, and there wasn't a stir in the sky or mud prints in the ground. They stayed like that, dancing. Clarence Nathan touched his wife's arm, the South Dakota sun pouring down generously around them.

Treefrog hears a sudden startling thud and he opens his eyes, gets to his feet, feels for the spud wrench. The top hinge of the cubicle door cracks and the wood splinters.

Electric light slips out from the smashed door.

He wonders for a moment where exactly he is—in a tunnel or a car or by a lake—and then Angela stumbles from the cubicle, pushing at the broken door, her body heaving, her breath rapid.

Elijah follows her.

“No!” she shouts.

The bare lamp in the cubicle swings.

Elijah punches the back of her head and she stumbles again, turns, spins in the light, falls.

Angela crawls to her feet, blood from her mouth and blood from her eye and blood down her cheek. Even in the patch of pendular light, Treefrog can see that her body is a sad broken mess. She limps in the gravel near the edge of the tracks, her fur coat half on, her handbag swinging in the air to keep Elijah at bay. “No!” And then Treefrog comes out from the far darkness with the spud wrench tight in his fist.

Elijah—standing back from the range of Angela's handbag—looks across the tracks, takes down the hood of his sweatshirt, says, “Look who's here.” He beckons Treefrog with a curled finger. “Come on, man, come on, motherfucker.”

Angela whimpers by the tracks, the bag clutched to her chest. Treefrog is aware of every step he takes, as if he is floating through the dark.

The cubicle door swings back and forth and light leaks into the tunnel, licking into the dark corners, touching Treefrog's body, sliding off once more, until the door stops swinging and he stands in a definite circle of light.

No need for balance, the pump of certainty through him. He moves across the tracks and stops.

Elijah grins.

Treefrog grins back.

Elijah puts one foot out in front of the other, holds his fists up.

Treefrog steps closer.

Elijah makes a quick spin.

Treefrog steps back from the arc of Elijah's kick, moves forward, ducks beneath the second kick.

Elijah's leg slices above him as if in slow motion.

Treefrog's body seems set on springs, and he rises from his crouch and the spud wrench swings upward and—with perfect accuracy—catches Elijah in the crotch. Elijah falls back against the cubicle, holding his balls. He cries out in agony and takes four huge gulps of breath.

Putting one hand on the ground, Elijah slowly uncoils, reaching for a knife in his back pocket.

Treefrog steps closer.

Elijah's eyes grow wide. He prods the knife out, jabs with it.

Treefrog keeps coming.

The whites of Elijah's eyes look huge.

The knife slices the air.

Treefrog steps aside.

Elijah's body follows the curve of the knife.

Stepping into the created space, Treefrog grins. The swing of the spud wrench into Elijah's elbow is swift and graceful, and the crack of bone echoes the splinter of the door, and the knife clatters to the ground.

When the spud wrench swings a second time, it catches Elijah on the shoulder and he lets out an animal howl, his face creased in terror. He totters, puts one hand to his elbow, the other to his testicles, and then the spud wrench swings again.

This time it catches Elijah's knee, and in one smooth movement Treefrog kicks the knife away.

As Elijah falls, Treefrog plants his boot firmly into Elijah's teeth and a monumental joy whips through him as Elijah's head slams back against the broken door. Treefrog's boot connects with Elijah's crotch and the man accordions in massive pain and emits a groan that Treefrog thinks might reverberate off the walls and last forever in the tunnel.

He picks Elijah's knife up, tucks it in his pocket, leans down, and calmly says, “Good morning, asshole.”

Elijah spits up some blood and turns his face away, coughing and moaning. Angela, watching from the tracks, pulls her hand from her ruined mouth and cheers. All the time, it feels to Treefrog that this is the first thing he has ever done in his life.

chapter 13

where the steel hits the sky

He slings her handbag up into the nest and climbs to the first catwalk easily. Removing his gloves for a better grip, he leans down to grab her by the wrist.

She places her leg against the column, but the soles of her high heels are slippery and he must use all the strength of his forearms to haul her up. Her face is already bloated and bruised; there is blood from her mouth where a tooth has cracked; her eye is lacerated and bleeding. With one leg against the concrete column, she sobs. “Treefy.” Her arms flail and she breathes nervously. “I can't do it. I can't do it, Treefy.”

She seems to want to fall—it is only a few feet to the tunnel floor—but she stretches and catches hold of the crossbeam and his arms curl under her armpits. He leans dangerously over the beam and drags her up through the darkness until she is lying on the lowest beam, whimpering. He remembers lifting his daughter off the swing, and his stomach feels huge and hollow.

“Bring your legs across,” he says.

“Why don't you—”

“Rest easy, Angela.”

“—have a goddamn ladder?”

He steps across her in one smooth movement and takes her hand in his. “I wanna get down,” she says.

“Stand up,” says Treefrog. “I got you, you won't fall, I promise; you gotta trust me.”

“I don't trust nobody.”

“Just try.”

“Nobody, I said.”

She remains with one leg on either side of the icy beam and her hands clasped at its edge. Her body begins quivering, so he leans down and puts his arms around her to warm her. He looks down at her high heels and says, “Wait a minute.”

And he is gone, twelve steps across, up to the next beam, into his nest and down again, holding some sneakers and three pair of socks. Treefrog hunkers down, removing Angela's shoes.

“Here,” he says.

He flings her high heels all the way across the tracks toward the mural, and they land and roll in the patch of snow beneath the grill. “Stay still,” he says, and he pulls two sets of socks over her feet. He ties the sneakers—they are still way too big—and then tells her, “Now.”

Shoving the third set of socks into his pocket, he steps over her crouched form, stands behind her, lifts her up, and holds her waist.

“Treefy!”

“I got you.”

“It's icy.”

This he recalls as he walks behind her: he arrives after dawn, a man in motion toward the sky. He climbs the steps from the subway station, walks down a street cantankerous with car horns. He is pinned in by businessmen and women on the way to Wall Street, but soon he joins other men, construction workers, who look as if they might have stepped out of advertisments for very strong cigarettes. Their eyes are bleary from nights of love and drink and television and cocaine. The back pockets of their jeans have taken on the logic of what they carry—the imprint of a pack of cigarettes, a small circle where tobacco tins jut, the bump of a plastic baggie of cocaine, the mark of a wallet. In the wallets they carry photos of their mothers and their wives and their girlfriends and their daughters and sometimes even their fathers and their sons. If they get hurt, it will be close to those they care about; it's better to die close to family than to commerce. Still, death is seldom mentioned—even at funerals they say nothing about the way the dead man fell forty feet, or how the elevator shaft collapsed, or the attempted suicide that was caught by the net, or the single bolt that fell from up high and created a corridor of blood in a bricklayer's head. Instead, they talk of women and girls and waitresses and the gentle curve of buttocks and flamboyant asses and the appearance of summer nipples and the way a shoulder is bared to sunlight.